As the debate rages on over how much a retweet or like is really worth, an entirely new crop of social media apps are sprouting up with hardly any marketing value attached to them at all.

After focusing on growing their user base for many years, the stalwarts of social media -- Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others -- have begun to hit their stride with growing revenue streams thanks to a burgeoning class of ad products that deliver a clear return on investment for advertisers.

The path to revenue for ephemeral and anonymous apps like Snapchat, Secret, Whisper and Tinder is less defined. If any of these new social apps succeed in making revenue, they will have to travel down roads less traveled. After all, stickers and other quick-revenue schemes will never justify the sky-high valuations many of these companies are attracting among investors.